Gaston lawmaker wants to help motorcyclists lose their helmets

Friday

Bill Starnes pulled on his leather chaps last weekend, mounted his Harley-Davidson and headed to Myrtle Beach, S.C .

North Carolina law demanded that he also don a helmet. But once across the state line, he planned to park his motorcycle long enough to let his gray locks fly free in the wind.

“I’m an adult,” said Starnes, who favors the South Carolina law requiring helmets only for bikers younger than 21. “As an adult, I feel I’m capable of making my own decisions regarding safety equipment.”

Starnes, the legislative chairman of the Concerned Bikers Association of Gaston County, is among those who have lobbied the state since the 1990s to do away with its mandatory helmet law.

Helmet advocates point to studies that credit the protection with reducing serious brain injury and deaths due to wrecks. But opponents have questioned that, offering new state and federal statistics that suggest helmets are far from being a cure-all.

This year, Starnes and his supporters have help from a fellow motorcyclist from Stanley, who also has a legislative seat in Raleigh.

Rep. John Torbett, R-Gaston, has filed a bill that would require head protection only for the youngest riders. He initially proposed requiring helmets until bikers turn 18. But during a committee discussion on the matter, he accepted an amendment that would match the age-of-21 benchmark set by South Carolina.

Torbett, 56, has ridden motorcycles since he was 18. Like many other bikers from the area, he often heads down to South Carolina for the freedom of cruising helmet free.

“What this is about to me is pretty much the freedom of an adult to choose,” he said.

Saving riders’ lives?

North Carolina is one of 19 states where safety helmets are required for all motorcyclists. And 78 percent of motorcycle riders support the state law, according to a recent survey by the Governor’s Highway Safety Program.

Members of the Concerned Bikers Association say they are more representative of how the public feels. The group has about 2,000 members statewide, including some 350 in Gaston County.

During a House committee meeting to discuss Torbett’s bill, a Raleigh surgeon warned against making the law less restrictive.

Dr. Pascal Odekwu, the director of the WakeMed trauma unit for the past 10 years, told lawmakers that it is generally accepted around the world that helmets save riders’ lives and make their injuries less serious, reported to The Associated Press.

Speaking for the N.C. Association of Emergency Room Physicians, Odekwu added that helmets reduce medical and rehabilitation costs that often fall to taxpayers. He said a brain-injury patient’s initial hospital bill can exceed $250,000, and a single patient’s long-term costs often exceed millions of dollars.

“That is a cost we all bear,” he told the committee.

Fighting for change

Torbett said those arguments have been common over the years, but he thinks they’re off base. He presented numbers from the DOT and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration that downplay the role of helmets in preventing death and serious injury.

Sixty-three percent of motorcycle wreck fatalities do not involve major head injuries that would have been prevented by the use of a helmet, according to the NHTSA. The fatal wounds are often to other areas, such as the torso or its internal organs.

Statistics also suggest helmets offer less protection the faster a biker is riding, according to the NHTSA.

“It’s amazing to me to see these numbers, when the statistics that have always been promoted are aimed at getting people to wear helmets,” Torbett said.

Helmet mandates create an illusion of protection and divert attention from more proven safety strategies, such as motorcycle safety awareness education, Torbett said. He also pointed to figures that show North Carolina’s current rate of motorcycle fatalities, at 12 percent of total traffic deaths, is roughly the same as South Carolina’s 11-percent rate.

Starnes said the Concerned Bikers Association spends as much time promoting safety as it does opposing the helmet requirement. They routinely talk to young drivers in schools about being more aware of motorcyclists on the road.

“We’re not just fussing about a law,” he said. “We’re also working within our ranks to promote safety.”

Torbett also said he always wears a helmet if he’s on the interstate or in heavy traffic.

“But if I’m in South Carolina where I can ride the country roads and not wear a helmet, I don’t,” he said.

A vote on Torbett’s bill was postponed until a future meeting. But he hopes lawmakers will hear his message.

“Most of the people who think it makes sense for motorcycle riders to wear helmets all the time are people who don’t ride motorcycles,” he said. “We’re trying to claw back and keep them from taking more and more freedom from individuals.”

You can reach Michael Barrett at 704-869-1826 or twitter.com/GazetteMike.

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